Facebook wants to help you spend less time on their apps

Do you ever open Facebook or Instagram to check a few posts and end up scrolling for way too long? Facebook outlined some new features coming to Facebook and Instagram that will help prevent just that. In a meeting, Facebook showed up off dashboards coming to the two social media apps that will let you keep track of how much time you have actually spent using the apps each day.

If the dashboard is not enough, there are a couple of other new features that could help you keep your social media usage under control. If you are the type of person to lose track of time when you are going through posts or photos, you will also have the option to set a time limit for yourself. After you have used the app for that specified amount of time an alert will pop up to let you know. Additionally, if you constantly feel bombarded with notifications throughout the day, you will be able to mute them for several hours.

How will this affect Facebook’s short-term growth?

By making it easier for Facebook and Instagram users to stay aware of their usage on the two widely popular apps, Facebook could be putting their growth in jeopardy. If people are using Facebook less often, for example, the marketing companies that pay Facebook to advertise on the service will have less data to work with.

Financially, Facebook has already been having a rough few months. By helping people spend less time on their apps, Facebook might lose both money and users when the new features are rolled out to everyone.

How will this affect Facebook’s long-term growth?

There is no denying that social media addiction is a growing concern. A lot of people are starting to realize just how easy it is to spend hours a day checking posts and interacting on social media platforms. Mark Zuckerberg has expressed a desire to shift towards focusing more on the quality of the interactions on Facebook’s services, rather than total time spent per user. These new Facebook and Instagram features could help people make their social media usage more meaningful, and if it does, users may start to view the two apps in a more positive light.